26. LIAR

LIAR, Justine Larbalestier
Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers e-book, 280 pages, 2009

I first heard about this book because of the cover controversy, which you can Google if you like, but it's far from the most interesting thing about the book, so I won't be talking about it here. I expected LIAR to be fast-paced, tightly constructed, surprising, and smart, and it exceeded my expectations by being all those things and also literary. It's the kind of book that's hard to talk about in a review without giving away massive spoilers, but at its most basic it's a murder mystery told by a self-avowed liar. The question throughout the novel is how much of Micah's fantastic story you can believe, and of course I have my own theory, but I won't be sharing it, partly because it contains too many spoilers and partly because there are so many possible interpretations and each reader has to draw their own conclusions.

(please someone else read this book so we can talk about it)

Anyway, what really pushed this from "good read" to "WOW" for me was the subtle but penetrating commentary on femininity that was everywhere in the story. Micah spins the most elaborate lies to alternately hide, explain, deny and justify her sexuality; the author never beats you over the head with it (although one of the characters makes the mistake of pointing it out to Micah), but it makes the book so much more than it would be if it was just a murder mystery.